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The Flow of Time

What I find incredibly interesting is time. When we wait for something to happen, be it waiting to see the doctors, perhaps for a flight, or the bus when the rain pours down, it feels as though time couldn’t go by any slower. And yet when we are doing something incredibly entertaining, seeing old friends again, having much needed family time, then time seems to speed up and run away without us. Although the passing of the time is at the exact same rate, it is interesting how the brain can ignore time and speed it up, or concentrate so hard on it that it becomes a slow drudge.

It seems with old friends in particular that time can fly right before our eyes without even realising it. I graduated from University in 2011. It’s now 2014 and I have barely seen any of my close friends that I know I should have. But time ran away. I got a job, I moved house, twice, and thus moved further away and out of the ‘hop on the train and come see me for a day’ range. With the full-time job there are now less days available to me to come see my old friends, and likewise for them to see me.

I recently attended a wedding of a University friend. I hadn’t seen her since we graduated, almost a full three years ago. But as soon as I saw her time seemed to have forgotten to age us all, for she and I looked the same, and we were back to being exactly as we were. It was as if time did not speed through the last three years but instead simply paused. It took the moments we had, the people we were, and paused a portion of that time. When we reunited, we resumed as if no space had parted us. I met up with other friends who I hadn’t seen in a long time, and again we were exactly the same (except for maybe the posh wedding attire we all had donned).

The day itself flew by. It all happened so quickly that indeed it felt as though I merely blinked and missed it all. When will I see my friends again like that? Will time pause us again and reunite us back to our old University normality? Or will time speed on, and leave our memories marked in the footprints of our lives?